I have developed the following list of things that clearly have no business being in a professional football broadcast:

1. Hot pink. I’m all in favor of breast cancer research, but does anybody really think that hot pink gloves, hot pink cleats, hot pink chinstraps, hot pink sweatbands, hot pink mouth guards, hot pink towels, and baseball caps with hot pink piping are really going to increase awareness and funding of breast cancer research that much? I can think of far more pleasant and tasteless ways to endorse breast cancer research at a professional football game.

(As an aside, prostate cancer research gets less attention and far less than half the funding that breast cancer research does, despite prostate cancer killing nearly as many people per year as breast cancer does. That may be due to male vanity, or male reluctance to talk about the matter. That may be due to greater male interest in breasts than in prostates. Whatever the reason, maybe the NFL needs to start promoting prostate cancer research, though I shudder to think what PR gimmick they’d use.)

2. Bumper music by Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, and Fluke. No. This is football.

3. The Bears’ offensive line. Nine sacks in the first half and Cutler got knocked out of the game.

…

This was the fifth week in a row my beer league soccer team did not have substitutes, and the fourth week in a row we were going to play short at least one player. Our saving grace this week was that the other team didn’t show up at all, so we won by forfeit. We scrimmaged a team from the next division up, whose opponents also hadn’t shown up. I scored a nice goal, a lefty from 20 yards out, but we lost the scrimmage.

We should’ve had a good season, but we ran out of players. Some people had good reasons for missing games, such as pregnancy, childbirth, tearing ankle ligaments, tearing knee ligaments, visiting a cancer-stricken mother, and moving out of the country to be with a spouse. That’s understandable, life happens. But other folks simply stopped showing up without explanation. And the especially frustrating thing is that in each of the last five weeks, when we had no subs or were short, we lost by a single score each time.

It’s been a good bonding experience, and playing five straight games with no substitution has eased any concerns I had about my heart. But playing 5-on-7 and 6-on-7 has gotten old, fast.

…

There’s got to be a way to get the Bears’ D to play offense, too. Todd F@#$%^g Collins? This is agonizing.